Eva double checked the address. Triple checked. Yeah, she was in the right place alright. It wasn’t some shady looking back alley or a basement dive bar or anything, it seemed to be a perfectly normal, even a bit ritzy, clothing store. She sighed in relief at that - no need to worry too much.

The advertisement had been, in all honesty, a bit suspect. Some magazine clippings slid under her dorm room door, a job offer for modeling clothes. Normally, Eva would have rejected it out of hand. She was reasonably confident in her looks and all; a good figure, sleek black hair, smooth pale skin. But they weren’t model quality, and it wasn’t like the job would give her relevant experience for her field. And more than either of those two factors the advertisement was shady as all heck.

But desperate times called for desperate measures, and she was desperate as can be! She’d had some savings going into college, but after a few semesters of failing to find a job she was running out. How do they expect you to have experience, if all ‘entry level’ jobs needed experience!? She’d seen an ad needing six years of experience coding a language invented 3 years before, what were they expecting? A time traveller? So because of all that, she needed to take whatever job she could get her hands on before the new semester started in a month.

She walked into the store to find it reasonably busy, with men and women alike searching for the latest in fashion. She almost wanted to do the same, but she didn’t have too long until the meeting. She went to the customer assistance counter, staffed by a young woman not much older than she was. “Hello?”

“Hi, and welcome to Perfect Fits!” the woman said brightly. “My name is Arya, do you need some help?”

“A little bit,” Eva said, “I’m here for the modeling job?”

Arya frowned. “Modeling job?”

Crap, was this the wrong place after all? Eva fished around in her bag and took out the advertisement. “Uh, this ad. Modeling at Perfect Fits, no experience required, taking anyone who wants it… is it already filled?”

The young woman quickly read the ad. “Ooooh, yes, I see. No, it’s not filled, my mistake. Come with me to the back room.” She gestured to a door behind her.

Eva was guided through a short hall to what looked to be a small studio. “I’m the one handling the shoot, so all you really have to do is get dressed.”

“Wait, isn’t there an audition or something…?” Eva asked.

“Nope.” Arya said cheerfully. “You look cute, and all you really have to do is wear the clothes and pose, so it’s not like we need big qualifications. I’m the one in charge of this program, so what I say goes.”

Eva blinked. “...Honestly that was easier than I thought it would be.” she said, before going to the designated changing room.

The outfit she was modeling was a cute swimsuit, a thin black bikini set that she figured would sell well with summer coming soon. It was… kinda embarrassing to imagine wearing that, but she wasn’t about to back out when the money was so good for so little work. She walked back out to find a green screen set up and cameras in place.

“You look really nice in that!” Arya said as Eva walked into the room. “I knew you’d rock it!”

“T-Thanks… can we get this going? I’m feeling kinda embarrassed…” Eva said. She tried a few poses, trying to get into it.

“Sure, sure. Just sign this contract here. Standard employment stuff.” She handed Eva a clipboard and pen.

Eva took the pen and signed quickly; the place was obviously legitimate and she didn’t want to do this for longer than she had to.

“Excellent!” Arya said, getting behind the camera. “Now, get in a nice, relaxed pose. Maybe a stretch? And be sure to smile!”

Eva nodded, and tried to take a pose. She imagined stretching after a nice nap on the beach. And tried not to imagine how she looked in that swimsuit. There was a camera flash, and she relaxed. Or rather, she tried to, but she couldn’t move. Her thoughts were… slow, sluggish. She felt like she should be panicking. But she couldn’t.

In the time it took the camera to flash, Eva had been transformed. It was rapid, and complete. If it were slow enough to be seen, it would be as a discoloration of her skin, starting from the feet and moving up. Pale peach skin turned a plastic grey as the change traveled up her legs. At the joints, thin lines appeared in the skin as she split to pieces. She didn’t feel a thing as, wherever the discoloration spread, her insides faded as she hollowed out.

The plastic traveled up her chest, up her arms and her neck. Her cute smile froze in place, as she was locked to her pose. Her hair went from natural human hair to artificial fibers as it separated from her head as a wig. In less than the blink of an eye, Eva had gone from a flesh and blood human to a mannequin.

The new mannequin toppled over, no longer able to support it’s own weight. Arya winced a bit and walked over to it. “Well, that went well! How’re you feeling?” she asked. Eva tried to answer that she felt surprisingly good, actually, but she couldn’t speak. “Right. Inanimate object. Sorry, I’m kinda new here. Just a few more adjustments and we can get you on the job.”

Arya picked the mannequin up - bulky, but not heavy due to the light plastic and the fact the only thing inside it was air - and brought her to the next room over. She set her on a workbench and took out some tools. “Now, this is going to feel odd, but don’t worry about it, standard procedure. Identity protection and all.”

First, Arya took Eva’s wig off, and settled it on a stand nearby and put a label on that. Then she got to work. First, using a rather large drill, she put a hole into Eva’s rear end. “For the stand,” she explained helpfully. Eva felt like it should have hurt, but honestly it felt kind of nice.

The next thing was a sander, which she quickly took to Eva’s face. Her facial features were carefully worn away, and with them she felt her identity slip. She wasn’t human, right? If she was, this would have hurt, this would have been bad. But it didn’t, and it wasn’t. Soon, she was a faceless mannequin. “This serves two purposes. It keeps your identity private, and it lets our customers project onto you better! Doesn’t that sound nice?”

It did sound nice, the mannequin agreed, although she was no longer sure what identity there was to protect. Arya polished off her now blank face to a mirror sheen. Oddly, the mannequin could still see, here, and feel despite her lack of features, but that seemed quite reasonable to her. She did have an aching feeling, a desire she couldn’t quite place.

Arya selected a new wig from a separate rack, a short, sporty blonde style, and put it onto the mannequin. “Now, this should let you enjoy your stay a bit more… it’d be kinda boring for a normal person to stand around all day, right, Mia?” she said, using the name stitched into the wig’s label.

Mia enthusiastically agreed. A mannequin like her was much better suited, both to not go nuts from the constant stillness and to properly display to the customers. It was what she wanted most, right then! She wanted to show them what they could look like in her clothes, she wanted to show off and be admired!

Of course, lacking a mouth… or vocal cords for that matter… she couldn’t express her sentiments, but Arya seemed to get it.

Within an hour, Mia was slotted into the peg right up front, in the display window - a place of honor, where she’d be able to really draw in customers! She could imagine herself waving to them, inviting them to picture their own faces in place of her blank mirror shine and see themselves in her clothes, see how nice she could make them look!

Time was odd for a mannequin, but there were a lot of dark times and then bright times. A calendar - meant to show how long her outfit would be available - ticked off day after day, week after week. But Mia didn’t care. She loved her job, her purpose in life!

One day, she was brought off the peg. This wasn’t unusual, although it was usually during closing so she could be cleaned, maybe put in a new outfit. Her owner was doing something different this time though, taking off her wig and putting a boring black one on her head. Well, maybe she could use a new style, if it’d fit with the new clothes. She was taken to a strange room with a green screen and a lot of cameras. Maybe a shoot, then? But where were the other-

The camera flashed, and Eva stumbled out of her pose. She blinked. Wait, she had eyes? She could move? She was a human? “What even… what…?”

“Welcome back!” Arya said cheerfully. “I’ve got your check here. You’ve done some good work, got us some good sales, so I put a bonus in there!”

“You… you turned me into a mannequin!” Eva shouted.

Arya looked confused. “Yes, and? What are you talking about? You signed up for the job.”

“I signed up to model! Not to be an inanimate object!” Eva couldn’t believe this - on several levels. How had she been turned into a mannequin? How had she been turned back? What kind of nutcase did that instead of just buying one?

Arya pulled out some note cards. “Now, common questions… the means is a trade secret, so no, I won’t tell you. The why is because we’ve noticed that there’s a lot better effect from person-derived mannequins than normal ones. And we did tell you, if you read the contract.”

“How… what… well I… I’m never coming back!” Eva shouted.

“That’s a shame.” Arya said, the disappointment clear in her voice. “Want your check first?”

Eva snatched the envelope out of Arya’s hands, and opened it to make sure the promised compensation was there. Her eyes widened as she saw just how much she’d made. “...How long was I out?”

“Three weeks. Your ID showed you were a student so we figured we should get you out before the semester started.”

“I… uh... Thank you… are you sure this is the right amount?”

“Quite sure, yes. Too bad you’re leaving. We could have used an extra…”

Eva looked from the check, to the camera, then back to the check. That was a lot of money. And she was a broke college student. Or had been, before she got that check. “...I… I can send you my university’s schedule, maybe set things up for breaks where I don’t have many assignments…”